Honestly, it's been really difficult for me to sit down and write this article because nothing went wrong with the wedding or the honeymoon. Writing about things that go well makes me feel like some sort of arrogant prick who has to brag about everything great in his life, and I hate to do that. It's so much easier when horrible things happen. Funny things, which are ultimately humiliating to me, make for a good story as far as I'm concerned, and the wedding and honeymoon had none of this, despite all the potential.
Let me back up a little.
Mary and I have known each other for about eleven years, and we've been living together for almost two. We have known for quite some time that we were eventually going to get married. On Valentine's day, we finally went to pick out an engagement ring and started planning the wedding. At first, we didn't want a reception, just a wedding at the courthouse and a dinner to celebrate, but eventually we decided that it was best to let everyone see the ceremony take place. Then we picked a place-- a beautiful little restaurant on the banks of the Delaware River in the town of New Hope.
The thing that hung over the wedding was the threat of rain. When you plan to have a wedding outside, you pretty much have to plan for the eventuality that it might rain, especially in this climate in the middle of summer. The restaurant people had shown us a nice room for the ceremony in the event of rain, but we really wanted to have it outside, next to the river.
We spoke little of the weather until a week before the wedding, and I anxiously listened to the 7-day forecast. "Cloudy, 70 degrees." Not bad. Then the rain started. It rained for almost the entire week before the wedding, with us listening to the weather forecast every hour. The forecast for June 13th slowly changed to "Cloudy with a passing thunder storm, 80 degrees," and eventually the dreaded "Showers with a chance of thunderstorm, 83 degrees."
We woke up on the morning of the thirteenth to find rain. "We'll just have it inside the restaurant. It will be better because if it was outside it would be really hot and what with the bugs and all, I think it would be generally unpleasant. We didn't even want to have anyone at our wedding anyway-- this is completely for their benefit," I reasoned.
"But it would be so nice to have it outside."
Anxiously we drove to my parent's house to get dressed for the wedding, and something amazing happened on the way there-- the rain slowed and then eventually stopped! We arrived to find it cloudy, but not raining. Perhaps a slim chance? It rained on the way to the hair salon, but while we were there, it cleared up and the sun actually came out.
We went back to my parents' house and changed into our wedding clothes, myself in my tux and Mary in her stunning dress. We had to make sure we got to the restaurant early in case we could still get some pictures while the rain had stopped, so we rushed everyone out the door.
We arrived at the restaurant over an hour early, and it was still not raining. The clouds looked ominous, however, and we were still not sure if we should have the wedding in the gazebo because we had hired a string quartet and it would take them quite a while to set up. We looked up at the sky.
Finally we decided to hope for the best and have it outside. People started arriving quite early-- the people who were supposed to park the cars came after most of them. Mary and I were busy posing for pictures and shaking hands and kissing everyone. The best man and maid of honor both showed up and were ready. Finally the moment came.
The crowd kind of stood around in a confused semi-circle as the procession started. At this point, time seemed to slow down and I was terribly moved by the song the musicians were playing, Pachelbel's Canon. The actual ceremony seemed to take two hours when in reality it only lasted fifteen minutes. Mary and I held hands the entire time. I was sweating like a hog because of the many layers of tuxedo, and I had to concentrate hard to keep from openly weeping at the sight of my beautiful bride. Finally, after what seemed like forever, it was over and my new wife and I stood around kissing people again. It was really quite strange. I got really tired of people asking me if I felt any different.
We went inside the restaurant to cool off because some of the guests were concerned with my perspiration, and we stood around and looked at the pile of gifts for us and admired the cake. Finally the guests started filtering in, the quartet relocated from the gazebo and we ate our first meal together as husband and wife.
The reception was amazingly free of problems. Several people got a bit tipsy and loud, but overall everyone had a really good time. There were surprisingly few comments about this being Mary's second marriage, aside from Mary's aunt warning her that "This is the last wedding gift I'm ever going to give you." Also, several potential personal conflicts never erupted, for instance, Mary's divorced parents joked around like old friends when they had to walk her down the aisle. Also, by an amazing coincidence, the maid of honor and the best man had a brief fling at the same time Mary and I had met back in 1986. Over the years, each of them said things about the other, but that day they acted as if nothing had happened.
Our friends and family really enjoyed the string quartet, which made us feel good. Both of us were violently opposed to having a wedding band or, God forbid, a DJ. Despite my mother's objections, we told them only to play classical music, even going as far as to put a "no Andrew Lloyd Weber" clause into the contract.
Before we knew it, the reception was over. Or at least, we were supposed to leave the room, but people were having such a good time talking to each other that we had to walk around and literally tell people that we needed to get out of the restaurant. We packed up all the presents into the car and headed back to my parents' house, and then back to our house. On the way home, a torrential downpour started and we were amazed that we had been so lucky.
We got home and opened our presents, and got a much-needed night's sleep.
The next day, we prepared to leave for our honeymoon in Paris. Now, I was positive that there would be some really funny bad things that would happen to us in Paris which would make for an amusing article. When we decided to go to Paris back in March, we didn't know anything about the Soccer World Cup which was to be in ten different cities of France for a whole month beginning about a week before our wedding. I booked the flight and then tried to find a room in a somewhat inexpensive hotel, only to find that all the cheap ones were all booked up. After much searching, my travel agent located one that was a little more than we wanted to spend, but it was a great hotel in a great location, so we decided to book it since it was our honeymoon.
About a week before the wedding, there was an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about how, on the eve of the World Cup, strikes were bringing Paris to the brink of disaster. This made us really nervous. According to the article, not only were Air France pilots on strike (we were flying British Air, so we weren't worried about that) but the baggage handlers and maintenance people at the airport were on strike as well. It also made a big deal about train strikes, a Metro strike, truck strikes and police strikes. It quoted all these people who were having the most horrible problems getting into the city from the airport, noting that the taxis were charging $75 for the ride (if they didn't decide to strike too).
We were also quite worried about the possibility of soccer-related violence. During the opening ceremonies for the World Cup (before any games had even been played), a mob of drunken soccer fans rioted and scores were arrested by police. It was shaping up to be quite a trip!
The flight from Philadelphia to London was uneventful and pleasant. We had both ordered vegetarian meals for the flight, and the cool thing about that is that they bring you your food before everyone else gets theirs. We landed in Heathrow airport, found the terminal where our flight was to depart from, and wandered through the stores that make Heathrow resemble a shopping mall rather than an airport. Our flight to Paris was delayed a bit, but we finally arrived in the city at around 11:00 AM.
I didn't get any sleep on any of the flights, so I arrived in Paris exhausted and disoriented. We took the express train into town and Mary told me which way to walk.
We finally arrived in the room and I crashed on the bed and slept for a few hours. After being awake for about 28 hours, my body was ready for some serious sleep, but since it was only two in the afternoon, my mind had other plans. Mary woke me up a few hours later and I found myself in a thick fog that made me feel like I was suspended in maple syrup. Ah, jet lag.
We ate dinner at an Italian restaurant. We hadn't planned to eat Italian food, but it was the only place open for dinner at five in the evening. It's hard to eat vegetarian in French restaurants because some sort of meat always seems to be a main course, so we ended up having Italian food three nights, Indian food two nights and Chinese food the other night. I was surprised to find that Paris is loaded with Chinese and Thai restaurants, along with a lot of Greek/Turkish places. We did eat French food for lunch several times (pastries, crepes and omelettes, and, of course, french fries.)
Perhaps the strangest thing for me about the dining experiences was having to speak French to Italian, Indian and Chinese people in restaurants. That was really odd. Mary speaks French fluently after taking it in high school and college. I took Spanish in high school and German in college, so learning a new language for the trip was pretty difficult with all the other languages in my head. I did manage to pick up a passing "restaurant vocabulary" so that I had little trouble ordering in French. French waiters, though notoriously rude, are somewhat less rude if you order in their language. Who can blame them? If some French people came into a restaurant in New York and tried to order in French, do you think the waiters would be polite?
While we were eating, it started raining, but we still went to see the Arc de Triomphe and headed down the Champs Élysées. It was here that we saw all the World Cup fans in action. The very wide sidewalk was packed with people wearing identical soccer jerseys and brightly colored wigs. For the most part, they seemed well behaved, but I could see how a lot of beer and a few national insults could result in mayhem. I certainly wasn't about to brag about being American considering how pathetically the American team performed in the tournament, scoring a grand total of one goal and losing to both Iran and Yugoslavia.
When the rain stopped, we headed to the river for a boat ride.
Then in short order over the next few days it was Eiffel
Tower, Notre Dame, Sacré-Coeur, Père Lachaise,
Museé D'Orsay... Sightseeing is really pretty boring
to read about so I'll just skip that part (especally because
everyone goes to Paris and you've seen the pictures a
million times).
My feet were killing me. A few weeks before the trip, I had dropped a large piece of furniture on the big toe of my right foot and I was unable to wear shoes on that foot for a long time. When we arrived in Paris, I had to wear sandals, which turned out to be a big mistake because after a day of walking with sandals, both Mary and I had bigger problems than my black toenail. Each night, we slunk back to our hotel at about 8 PM because we were no longer able to walk on our blistered and bleeding feet. I was forced to wear the dreaded fashion faux pas of socks with sandals, which, although somewhat embarrassing, was almost comfortable.
The soccer fans pretty much only hung out along the Champs Élysées and we didn't really see them anywhere else in Paris. Fortunately for us, they also stayed away from the museums. We literally walked right into the Louvre and Versailles (partially because we bought museum passes).
On Friday, we met up with mail artist Bruno Gheerbrant at a cozy bar near his apartment where we heard a singer sing some wonderful French songs. Bruno later showed us his family photos from the 1890's and played some French records for us. We had a great time with him, discussing mail art and many other less boring things. He regaled us with tales of working for the French post office and he revealed to us that according to the gardener of Père Lachaise (the cemetery in Paris where Jim Morrison's grave is), Jim's body is not there.
The next day, I woke up with a bad sore throat which got worse and worse as the day wore on. That night, we packed up our things and prepared to say goodbye to Paris. I slept about one hour or so that night as the pain in my throat kept me awake. When I did get some sleep it was some horrible nightmare about being lost in an airport.
Finally, our 3:30 AM wake up call came and we got ready to go to the airport. The long flight from London to Philadelphia was sheer agony for me as I had a full-blown flu by this time. I was blowing my nose every few minutes, and on the way down, my ears didn't pop. I couldn't hear anything for two days. At last, something went wrong! Unfortunately, the honeymoon was already over so it hadn't ruined anything. I even had a day off to recover. Oh well, you can't have everything.
